Ruby-Spears

Come 1982, the times they were a-changing, and fast.

While Happy Days was still plugging along, and would until 1984, Mork & Mindy was going to join the animated block courtesy of Ruby-Spears and take the place of the older franchise.

This is the show that I ended up grow- growing up watching, so I do enjoy Mork & Mindy, and I think we were talking about earlier about the fun time they had animating Mork, 'cause-

Yeah

'Cause we will eventually get to it.

Yeah, I will say that the Mork & Mindy cartoon is definitely the best of the three shows in this, uh, based on this, uh, universe.

Ruby-Spears really tries to, to capture Robin Williams', uh, energetic-ness in the animation, and while they don't fully succeed, you can at least see the effort.

Yeah.

There were two spinoffs from 1970-- 1988 to 1993, 2002 to 2003, that focus on Harold Chester and Howe specifically, and there were only two adaptations.

Uh, one was the 1982 special by Ruby Spears, and another one by Oscar Bretsky, and a series whose career we'll be talking about in Mary and Scary, Revenge of Billy and Mandy's Maxwell Adams.

Okay, now let's get into the book.

So each book opens with an error's note and a story from Harold.

A year, roughly, took them a year to catch up.

A year after Pac-Man's debut, CBS launched the Saturday Supercade, produced by Ruby Spears Productions.

That's a studio that was founded by two former Hanna-Barbera writers, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears.

Whereas Pac-Man had bet everything on a single character, Saturday Supercade hedged.

I still have the Super Show on DVD.

I'm very proud of owning that.

Capcom's Mega Man got a Ruby Spears series in the 90s.

Sonic the Hedgehog would end up with several different animated takes across that same decade.

All right, anyway, here's one from E-Way.

Crossover for classic cross legends, but last time you forgot Battle Network, Star Force, and Ruby Spears, and Fully Charged, and Ability.

What character interactions do you want? What is Mega Man Ability? Was it one of the mobile games? I think so.

Well, let's see.

That was like a month ago, but it's just a crossover between Classic and other franchises.

It is a crossover of Classic, X, and Legends.

But last time we forgot Battle Network, Star Force, Ruby Spears, Fully Charged, and Ability.

That's all the rest of them, basically, except Zero and a ZX.

Yes, that one, that one.

And then somebody else said they're talking figuratively like that he's, you know, sword as in he was popular from the start yeah um you know so not flying we know that he was leaping an eighth of a mile originally and didn't actually fly from the very beginning so we're talking figuratively there uh the superman animated series didn't get a mention uh although is it is in the visuals um and i said yeah well there was going to be many things that didn't get mentioned like the Broadway musical didn't get mentioned the Ruby Spears cartoons didn't get mentioned it's a touchstone on different things I'm sure we didn't get we didn't start the fire probably had criticisms for not including many historical items that people thought should have been included in that song but yeah there was always going to be things that got missed um brandon ralph was pronounced brandon ruth again something i you know couldn't fix but um it is what it is

yeah that is the thing that is one of the telltale things and i'm not getting into it one way or the other um but it is one of the telltale things of uh AI is when you hear something pronounced.

I was watching something on TikTok today and they're like NATO when they were talking about NATO.

But I grew up.

I'm a guy, I grew up watching Super Friends and Spider-Man and his amazing friends and Space Ghosts and Herculoids and all of the Hanna-Barbera stuff, all of the Ruby Spears stuff, Thundar and, you know, the Marvel stuff.

If you've not seen it, MCU Trivia Challenge, we did the Marvel's Avengers Assembled series which Earth's Mightiest Heroes is is what was Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes which is the best Marvel animated show ever made and in my opinion one of the top tier maybe top five of all time I would put this show the Batman in the top five not top five necessarily favorite But top five in terms of style, storytelling, and just animation, everything about it.

As a kid, I grew up with Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Super Friends, and those are my favorites.

Wow.

Heading into the late 70s and into the early 80s, Peter Cullen provided some voice work for a new animated show by Ruby Spears called Mighty Man and Yuck.

It's the world's smallest superhero, Mighty Man.

Hi there.

Yeah.

Then, see people think I'm gonna forget, but I'm not, in '88 we have the Ruby-Spears-

Right

... cartoon.

Right.

Uh, that was also the first instance of the post-Crisis evil businessman Lex adapted.

So there were some interesting things going on there, and so I feel like that, that Ruby-Spears cartoon definitely marked a turn.

I still think we only got so far on that.